Special Counsel Robert Hur refused to charge Joe Biden because his memory was too far gone to convince a jury.
Secret audio recordings sit at the heart of that investigation.
What those recordings captured is the one thing Biden's team has spent two years trying to make disappear.
Heritage Foundation Forces Release of Biden Classified Document Tapes
During his investigation into Joe Biden for stealing classified documents, former Special Counsel Robert Hur obtained something most Americans never knew existed – dozens of hours of audio recordings of Biden talking to his memoir ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, at his home in 2016 and 2017.
Those tapes are what showed Hur how bad Biden's memory actually was.
They also showed Biden reading classified material aloud to a private citizen – something Biden later denied at a press conference.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit handed the Heritage Foundation a 2-1 victory – rejecting Biden's emergency request to block the Department of Justice from turning over the tapes and transcripts.
Biden read from classified notebooks nearly verbatim to Zwonitzer – sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch.
At least three times, Biden read classified notes from national security meetings to his ghostwriter word for word.
Then Biden stood at a press conference and denied it ever happened.
Biden Ghostwriter Deleted the Tapes and Investigators Found Them Anyway
Zwonitzer didn't just cooperate quietly.
Once Hur's investigation began, the ghostwriter deleted digital audio recordings of his conversations with Biden.
Investigators recovered them anyway.
Hur's report described the recovered tapes as revealing Biden's "diminished faculties and faulty memory" – conversations that were "painfully slow," with Biden "struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries."
That report was released in February 2024.
Biden's team immediately invoked executive privilege to block the audio from going public.
The House of Representatives held then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for withholding it.
When Trump took office and the DOJ reversed course, Biden sued to stop the release himself.
He lost in federal district court in June when Trump-appointed Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled the public interest outweighed Biden's privacy claims.
He lost again at the appeals court – with judges appointed by both Obama and Trump joining the majority opinion.
The lone dissenter was Judge Florence Pan – Biden's nominee.
Two courts have now ruled that Biden "has not shown a likelihood that the requested materials must be withheld from disclosure."
The public interest in examining Hur's decision not to charge a former president, the court wrote, is "substantial."
70 Hours of Audio Could Expose the Full Timeline of Biden's Cognitive Decline
This is not a four-minute clip.
The recordings total approximately 70 hours of Biden talking to his ghostwriter – across multiple sessions, in his own home, before anyone was watching.
Hur's own interview with Biden, conducted in October 2023, produced audio showing the former president unable to recall what years he served as vice president or when his son Beau died.
The Zwonitzer sessions go back further – to 2016 and 2017 – and would establish exactly when the cognitive decline began and how much earlier it started than the American public was told.
The tapes would also show what classified material Biden read aloud and whether he understood any of it was restricted.
Hur punted on charges partly because he concluded Biden would present to a jury as a sympathetic old man who couldn't remember what he'd done.
Americans will get to decide for themselves whether that was an honest legal judgment – or a protection racket dressed up as prosecutorial discretion.
Kamala Harris spent two years assuring voters Biden had everything under control.
Pete Buttigieg went on television and said the same thing with a straight face.
Every Democrat now eyeing a 2028 presidential run spent years dismissing concerns about Biden's fitness as a right-wing smear – and seventy hours of tape from 2016 and 2017 makes every one of those assurances a liability.
Biden's last move is the Supreme Court.
His team has until August 3 to file for emergency relief.
John Roberts has surprised conservatives before.
But two courts have now agreed that a man who spent four years in the Oval Office does not get to permanently seal evidence from a criminal investigation because he finds it embarrassing.
Sources:
- Ward Clark, "Biden Fought to Keep the Hur Tapes Secret. A Court Just Moved Them Closer to Release," RedState, July 21, 2026.
- Matt Vespa, "After This Court Ruling on Joe Biden's Tapes, the Lib Media Should Brace to Be Flogged Again," Townhall, July 21, 2026.
- OAN Staff, "Appeals Court Rejects Biden's Attempt to Block Release of Ghostwriter Interview Recordings," One America News, July 21, 2026.
- Brooke Singman, "House Judiciary Subpoenas Biden Ghostwriter Amid Classified Records Investigation," Fox News, March 22, 2024.
- Staff, "Appeals Court Rejects Biden's Bid to Block Release of Recordings," Washington Times, July 21, 2026.
- Staff, "Appeals Court Rejects Biden's Bid to Block Release of Recordings with Ghostwriter," Daily Caller, July 21, 2026.